8K discussion thread

[LexInHD]

Sony is going at full attack speed on the professional side of 8K and they have no reason to make further efforts on the consumer side, unless and until the professional side bears significant fruit that delivers the seeds for the consumer side to grow. The consumer and professional electronics industry is still somewhat affected by the lingering effects of the global pandemic, so the push into 8K has stalled due to the latest display hardware being delayed in R&D and testing with the latest interfaces, as well as the global consumer disinterest in 8K TVs over 4K ones, the digital video camera market sitting happily at sub-8K resolution for most offerings, and all of the aforementioned being a factor in having the Asian and European production markets sticking with easy-peasy 4K production instead of pushing into the more advanced 8K.

[Anthony P]

Originally Posted by Bernardo A.

Upscaling is not useless, you know. Back in the day, prestige 35mm films would be optically enlarged to fill a 70mm print. And they were exhibited with awesome results.

I did not say all upscaling is useless. we are talking about upscaling a way over compressed video signal in a TV. Even if Sony's new TV comes with a better upscaler built in the benefit will be minimal at best. It can't make magic in real time with what is available to it.

[smoothbutter]

Originally Posted by PeterTHX

Unless they announce something soon I'm guessing that's it from them.

They will eventually release another 8K tv just like TCL and Hisesne will too. Whether that is 2025,20206,2027 or even later is anybody's guess..

I would say Sony will come out with a new upscaling processor next year and will come out with a 8K Z series tv. I would be shocked if they upgrade their processor and don't release a new 8K tv

[takeshi2010]

TL;DR: I think UHD is as far as I go.

Is there really that much demand for 8K? I mean, most people are still slinging DVDs, most enthusiasts are still on 2K BD only, what's left are the most hardcore tech heads and that's what? Like 1% of the population? If that much!

I'm only speaking for myself here, obviously, but I think I'm done. I've been collecting movies since the early 90s. Every tech since (VHS, LD, VCD, DVD, BD) has been a compromise for me: the best for the time, but nowhere near good enough. Up until recently, I was a proud member of the aforementioned tech heads, pixel-peeping till my eyes bled in the name of quality.

For the past 7-8 years, though, pretty much since UHD came along, I don't feel like I'm compromising anymore. BD has finally shown its full potential (those 2K Arrow/FiM encodes are still gorgeous) and 4K, I find, has a lot more hits than misses.

I think 4K is all I need. If I'm being perfectly honest, if all BD were done to the Arrow/FiM standard, I'd be pretty happy with BD being the last tech I owned. Most of the squabbling over UHD picture quality nowadays sounds like nitpicking to me, as I can't see a substantial difference anymore. Take for instance Criterion's UHDs: people still slam them for their encodes, and I find them perfect. I absolutely hated their BD encodes and was very critical of them, though. There's still some criticism I find warranted (wrong color space for 20mn, no OG audio, video glitches, and very rarely, godawful encodes), but for the most part, I now find myself satisfied with a large percentage of releases. And for those that still don't pass muster, I truly don't think 8K is going to help. It might even make things worse by pushing yet another tech gizmo over proper restorations that are respectful of the OG intent.

Now, to be fair, I watch movies in 1080p projected on a 130 inch screen. I know I'm not actually seeing the full potential of UHD. I know! But that's kind of the point: I've had years to upgrade to a full 4K setup, many occasions to do so, and I could pay for it if I wanted to. I've just never had the incentive to do so. VHS, DVD and early BD were all various degrees of bad. They were good incentives for me to invest in better tech. Recent releases are, for the most part, more than good enough, so I can't justify the expense.

Put another way, last night I watched The Quick and the Dead on UHD, projected at 1080p and tone-mapped. It was gorgeous. Honestly, at least as good as seeing a 35mm print. My jaw was on the floor from minute one, all the way to the end. I used to wince every time a sunset would appear on a DVD but, last night, I fully engaged with the movie, never bothered once by a technical aspect of the presentation. What's 8K going to add to that experience?

PS: also, 4K hits the sweet spot for resolution for 35mm. 8K is going to be overkill for most movies, except 65-70mm films and movies that are shot on 8K+ digital cameras. Even then, I doubt I'd see the difference with a well encoded UHD.

[Bernardo A.]

Originally Posted by takeshi2010

TL;DR: I think UHD is as far as I go.

Many people said that about 1080p, including myself. I've been collecting movies since I was 3 and... I'd buy everything again in a heartbeat.

Originally Posted by takeshi2010

PS: also, 4K hits the sweet spot for resolution for 35mm. 8K is going to be overkill for most movies, except 65-70mm films and movies that are shot on 8K+ digital cameras. Even then, I doubt I'd see the difference with a well encoded UHD.

Not exactly, it depends heavily on the film stock. And, as scanners get better, new information can be revealed.

[Dragun]

Originally Posted by Bernardo A.

Not exactly, it depends heavily on the film stock. And, as scanners get better, new information can be revealed.

Even if scanners do get better, they won't be revealing much, if any, information, beyond 4K from 35mm. Maybe some extra dye clouds or something, if you zoom in a bunch. Whatever improvements they do yield would likely be able to be displayed within a 4K format.

At this point, the quality bottlenecks are not the capabilities of the 4K UHD format, but errors and bad decisions made by the people working on these transfers. Misuse of DNR/filtering, bad encoding, grading, etc.

[takeshi2010]

Originally Posted by Bernardo A.

Many people said that about 1080p, including myself. I've been collecting movies since I was 3 and... I'd buy everything again in a heartbeat.

I never did though. I remember I couldn't wait to jump ship when DVD or BD were first announced. By comparison, my transition to UHD has been more... hesitant. I'll upgrade movies that have bad BD in a heartbeat, but when I have a choice between a FiM 2K encode I already have and a Shout UHD, it's not as clear-cut.

Originally Posted by Bernardo A.

Not exactly, it depends heavily on the film stock. And, as scanners get better, new information can be revealed.

Again, I think those were good arguments in the times of early BDs (we all remember those early HD masters full of scanner noise that we were trying to convince ourselves was grain). But nowadays... I think the scanners are as good as they need to be. I'm not saying I won't see any difference between a full 8K restoration and a "regular" 4K one if I compare caps. I probably will. But how much of that will actually contribute to the overall PQ, and more importantly to my enjoyment of the movie? Again, speaking only for myself, I'd say not much, if at all.

[Bernardo A.]

Originally Posted by Dragun

Even if scanners do get better, they won't be revealing much, if any, information, beyond 4K from 35mm. Maybe some extra dye clouds or something, if you zoom in a bunch. Whatever improvements they do yield would likely be able to be displayed within a 4K format.

At this point, the quality bottlenecks are not the capabilities of the 4K UHD format, but errors and bad decisions made by the people working on these transfers. Misuse of DNR/filtering, bad encoding, grading, etc.

I don't disagree, but it's worth noting that all this has been said about 2K scans once upon a time.

[mrtickleuk]

Originally Posted by takeshi2010

TL;DR: I think UHD is as far as I go.

Is there really that much demand for 8K? I mean, most people are still slinging DVDs, most enthusiasts are still on 2K BD only, what's left are the most hardcore tech heads and that's what? Like 1% of the population? If that much!
[...]
PS: also, 4K hits the sweet spot for resolution for 35mm. 8K is going to be overkill for most movies, except 65-70mm films and movies that are shot on 8K+ digital cameras. Even then, I doubt I'd see the difference with a well encoded UHD.

Very well put, in the whole post. It's already hard to tell the difference between
SDR HD upscaled to 4K by the TV, and
real SDR 4K.

The inclusion of HDR and WCG in the 4K consumer formats were the extra ingredient it really needed to get its case for adoption over the line. Without HDR and WCG, I'm sure there would have been a very different outcome to the adoption of 4K TVs.

And now, HDR and WCG are the focus of things - and quite rightly so. I think it's the most significant and exciting development in TV since the addition of colour. 8K doesn't bring any game-changing equivalents to the table at all. We're well past the point of "diminishing returns" for resolution, and so that's all it is. More resolution, at vast cost all the way through the production chain from camera to end-user. Then, when you add in the practicalities (many UK houses would need to be rebuilt to accommodate the large screen sizes required to see any difference, and no-one ever offers to pay for this), it tips over into "never going to happen" territory. All IMHO of course.

There is, sadly, almost certainly never going to be a consumer 8K disc format, so all this is academic anyway as in the hypothetical 8K-in-the-home future, there won't be anything to "collect" or own to playback whenever we like, long after the companies who created the content have gone bust.

(Regarding the quality of the grading and DNR, those factors are massively dwarfed by the damage done by the use of criminally low bitrates anyway, IMHO.)

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by Bernardo A.

I don't disagree, but it's worth noting that all this has been said about 2K scans once upon a time.

The industry realised that 4K was the minimum early on, but cost and expedience is what led to 2K becoming a thing...tho most "2K" restorations of movies are actually oversampled at the point of capture so they're baking in the benefits of a 4K or higher sensor.

But yes, I agree with the other fella: 8K is overkill for regular 4-perf (or less) 35mm. By all means scan it at 8K (dat oversampling again) but an 8K finish? Not convinced. Could you squeeze another fraction out of whatever 35mm film in 8K? Sure, especially if some kind of temporal detail processing was involved but we're still talking fractions vs 4K and in storage/throughput terms 8K takes up sixteen times as much information as a 2K workflow. That juice just isn't worth the squeeze.

Heck, even the famed '8K would only be worth it for large format' thing is a bit of a mislead because most large format e.g. 65mm or VV films are old as balls, and the stocks used all those decades ago just didn't resolve as much information as modern film stocks, not to mention how badly off some of those negatives are after decades of abuse. So even for those I'd say that 4K is gonna get you most of the way there. Would I love an 8K UHD of the Nolan IMAX movies? Yes, but a whole new disc format is not going to be created for a handful of movies.

[Steel76]

8K scans of 35mm films? Yeah, we might get even sharper filmgrain, to the point, that it will probably just look like scanner noise. Plenty of 35mm films, where the extra details, is barely noticeable, going from 2K to 4K. That tiny 35mm image, does not contain an infinite amount of details.

And what about those movies with 2K/4K DI masters?

We're just going to end up with a bunch of upscaled discs.
But if there are enough gullible collectors out there, willing to rebuy their entire collections, for 1% more details, then the studios can laugh all the way to the bank.

[Steedeel]

Originally Posted by takeshi2010

TL;DR: I think UHD is as far as I go.

Is there really that much demand for 8K? I mean, most people are still slinging DVDs, most enthusiasts are still on 2K BD only, what's left are the most hardcore tech heads and that's what? Like 1% of the population? If that much!

I'm only speaking for myself here, obviously, but I think I'm done. I've been collecting movies since the early 90s. Every tech since (VHS, LD, VCD, DVD, BD) has been a compromise for me: the best for the time, but nowhere near good enough. Up until recently, I was a proud member of the aforementioned tech heads, pixel-peeping till my eyes bled in the name of quality.

For the past 7-8 years, though, pretty much since UHD came along, I don't feel like I'm compromising anymore. BD has finally shown its full potential (those 2K Arrow/FiM encodes are still gorgeous) and 4K, I find, has a lot more hits than misses.

I think 4K is all I need. If I'm being perfectly honest, if all BD were done to the Arrow/FiM standard, I'd be pretty happy with BD being the last tech I owned. Most of the squabbling over UHD picture quality nowadays sounds like nitpicking to me, as I can't see a substantial difference anymore. Take for instance Criterion's UHDs: people still slam them for their encodes, and I find them perfect. I absolutely hated their BD encodes and was very critical of them, though. There's still some criticism I find warranted (wrong color space for 20mn, no OG audio, video glitches, and very rarely, godawful encodes), but for the most part, I now find myself satisfied with a large percentage of releases. And for those that still don't pass muster, I truly don't think 8K is going to help. It might even make things worse by pushing yet another tech gizmo over proper restorations that are respectful of the OG intent.

Now, to be fair, I watch movies in 1080p projected on a 130 inch screen. I know I'm not actually seeing the full potential of UHD. I know! But that's kind of the point: I've had years to upgrade to a full 4K setup, many occasions to do so, and I could pay for it if I wanted to. I've just never had the incentive to do so. VHS, DVD and early BD were all various degrees of bad. They were good incentives for me to invest in better tech. Recent releases are, for the most part, more than good enough, so I can't justify the expense.

Put another way, last night I watched The Quick and the Dead on UHD, projected at 1080p and tone-mapped. It was gorgeous. Honestly, at least as good as seeing a 35mm print. My jaw was on the floor from minute one, all the way to the end. I used to wince every time a sunset would appear on a DVD but, last night, I fully engaged with the movie, never bothered once by a technical aspect of the presentation. What's 8K going to add to that experience?

PS: also, 4K hits the sweet spot for resolution for 35mm. 8K is going to be overkill for most movies, except 65-70mm films and movies that are shot on 8K+ digital cameras. Even then, I doubt I'd see the difference with a well encoded UHD.

It depends if we really will be getting the much touted future of AR/XR glasses in the next 10-12 years. With VR and AR, 8K becomes important, and anything less than 4K will look naff. That’s where the technology will shine.
With most of big tech working on AR and similar, it seems inevitable that large screen viewing through these devices will make inroads in the market.

Personally, I have noticed a considerable difference with UHD. I would love for 8K take off, but I think 4K is going to be around for an exceptionally long time.
DVD or any SD source is going to look horrific in 4K, so hopefully the format will fade. (In the U.K., stores like HMV are reporting an uptick on 4K disc sales, which is encouraging.)

[soaptrail]

Originally Posted by mrtickleuk

Very well put, in the whole post. It's already hard to tell the difference between
SDR HD upscaled to 4K by the TV, and
real SDR 4K.

The inclusion of HDR and WCG in the 4K consumer formats were the extra ingredient it really needed to get its case for adoption over the line. Without HDR and WCG, I'm sure there would have been a very different outcome to the adoption of 4K TVs.

And now, HDR and WCG are the focus of things - and quite rightly so. I think it's the most significant and exciting development in TV since the addition of colour. 8K doesn't bring any game-changing equivalents to the table at all. We're well past the point of "diminishing returns" for resolution, and so that's all it is. More resolution, at vast cost all the way through the production chain from camera to end-user. Then, when you add in the practicalities (many UK houses would need to be rebuilt to accommodate the large screen sizes required to see any difference, and no-one ever offers to pay for this), it tips over into "never going to happen" territory. All IMHO of course.

There is, sadly, almost certainly never going to be a consumer 8K disc format, so all this is academic anyway as in the hypothetical 8K-in-the-home future, there won't be anything to "collect" or own to playback whenever we like, long after the companies who created the content have gone bust.

(Regarding the quality of the grading and DNR, those factors are massively dwarfed by the damage done by the use of criminally low bitrates anyway, IMHO.)

I agree, I am not sure I would jump on the 4K bandwagon without HDR and WCG. Keep in mind a significant chunk of movies being put on UHD are not getting Atmos soundtracks, it is the same audio on BD is a bummer even as someone who does not have Atmos i feel cheated by studios.

[moreorless]

Originally Posted by takeshi2010

TL;DR: I think UHD is as far as I go.

Is there really that much demand for 8K? I mean, most people are still slinging DVDs, most enthusiasts are still on 2K BD only, what's left are the most hardcore tech heads and that's what? Like 1% of the population? If that much!

I'm only speaking for myself here, obviously, but I think I'm done. I've been collecting movies since the early 90s. Every tech since (VHS, LD, VCD, DVD, BD) has been a compromise for me: the best for the time, but nowhere near good enough. Up until recently, I was a proud member of the aforementioned tech heads, pixel-peeping till my eyes bled in the name of quality.

For the past 7-8 years, though, pretty much since UHD came along, I don't feel like I'm compromising anymore. BD has finally shown its full potential (those 2K Arrow/FiM encodes are still gorgeous) and 4K, I find, has a lot more hits than misses.

I think 4K is all I need. If I'm being perfectly honest, if all BD were done to the Arrow/FiM standard, I'd be pretty happy with BD being the last tech I owned. Most of the squabbling over UHD picture quality nowadays sounds like nitpicking to me, as I can't see a substantial difference anymore. Take for instance Criterion's UHDs: people still slam them for their encodes, and I find them perfect. I absolutely hated their BD encodes and was very critical of them, though. There's still some criticism I find warranted (wrong color space for 20mn, no OG audio, video glitches, and very rarely, godawful encodes), but for the most part, I now find myself satisfied with a large percentage of releases. And for those that still don't pass muster, I truly don't think 8K is going to help. It might even make things worse by pushing yet another tech gizmo over proper restorations that are respectful of the OG intent.

Now, to be fair, I watch movies in 1080p projected on a 130 inch screen. I know I'm not actually seeing the full potential of UHD. I know! But that's kind of the point: I've had years to upgrade to a full 4K setup, many occasions to do so, and I could pay for it if I wanted to. I've just never had the incentive to do so. VHS, DVD and early BD were all various degrees of bad. They were good incentives for me to invest in better tech. Recent releases are, for the most part, more than good enough, so I can't justify the expense.

Put another way, last night I watched The Quick and the Dead on UHD, projected at 1080p and tone-mapped. It was gorgeous. Honestly, at least as good as seeing a 35mm print. My jaw was on the floor from minute one, all the way to the end. I used to wince every time a sunset would appear on a DVD but, last night, I fully engaged with the movie, never bothered once by a technical aspect of the presentation. What's 8K going to add to that experience?

PS: also, 4K hits the sweet spot for resolution for 35mm. 8K is going to be overkill for most movies, except 65-70mm films and movies that are shot on 8K+ digital cameras. Even then, I doubt I'd see the difference with a well encoded UHD.

Whilst you idealy do want the best standards and with people directly involved in the industry I can see it naturally being a focus honestly I fear becoming TOO obsessed with it.

There are definitely some releases like say T2 which are handled in a questionable fashion but as you say there are things like encodes which some people absolutely rage against and consider unwatchable were I can see small issues at best. I just feel like who is really getting the most out of owning this stuff? if you end up disliking most of what you buy is it worth it?

I do strongly suspect UHD will be the last physical media format, I think you can already see the way its progressed is different to DVD and Bluray, its retained its value far more than they did because its more akin to Laserdisc, its never gone mainstream and tried to sell stuff cheap to maximise appeal.

As you say I think its only going to be a few releases which really exploit 8K, either stuff shot natively on it which is only just happening(and still pretty rare, when 8K is used its mostly for a 4K master) and with larger film formats. Honestly even 70mm stuff from back in the day I think 4K is probably getting close to the maximum detail out of it, its probably more recent IMAX shot stuff like Nolan which could actually look significantly better.

[mrtickleuk]

Originally Posted by Steel76

We're just going to end up with a bunch of upscaled discs.
But if there are enough gullible collectors out there, willing to rebuy their entire collections, for 1% more details, then the studios can laugh all the way to the bank.

There aren't.

[SCS_Shoug]

If we DO get an 8K home format, I imagine it'll just be like MUSE LD or D-Theater: Only available in a very limited market, incredibly expensive and meant for the richest of the rich videophiles of the time, dies a quick death and later fades into obscurity cause of the price, time, and subsequent lack of adoption. Not just that, but considering every format has its growing pains at the start of its life, including UHD, we'd definitely get some theoretical 8Ks that are subpar in some way because they haven't figured everything out yet, most likely encoding.

[sapiendut]

Originally Posted by SCS_Shoug

If we DO get an 8K home format, I imagine it'll just be like MUSE LD or D-Theater: Only available in a very limited market, incredibly expensive and meant for the richest of the rich videophiles of the time, dies a quick death and later fades into obscurity cause of the price, time, and subsequent lack of adoption. Not just that, but considering every format has its growing pains at the start of its life, including UHD, we'd definitely get some theoretical 8Ks that are subpar in some way because they haven't figured everything out yet, most likely encoding.

Agree. The crybabies already crying about Kaleidescape price for starting at $4K. Imagine 8K exclusivity?

[Bernardo A.]

Originally Posted by Steel76

8K scans of 35mm films? Yeah, we might get even sharper filmgrain, to the point, that it will probably just look like scanner noise. Plenty of 35mm films, where the extra details, is barely noticeable, going from 2K to 4K. That tiny 35mm image, does not contain an infinite amount of details.

And what about those movies with 2K/4K DI masters?

We're just going to end up with a bunch of upscaled discs.
But if there are enough gullible collectors out there, willing to rebuy their entire collections, for 1% more details, then the studios can laugh all the way to the bank.

As much as I agree with y’all, I must say that I have a hard time believing that modern fine grain 35mm film stocks (like 2383 series, even medium-speed ones) wouldn’t reach 5K-7K levels.

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by sapiendut

Agree. The crybabies already crying about Kaleidescape price for starting at $4K. Imagine 8K exclusivity?

I'd happily pay £100 for a pristine 8K copy of whatever film, but four fookin grand for the player? **** right off with that shit. Only the stupidly rich and/or terminally gullible (the two usually go hand in hand) need apply.

[Bernardo A.]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

I'd happily pay £100 for a pristine 8K copy of whatever film, but four fookin grand for the player? **** right off with that shit. Only the stupidly rich and/or terminally gullible (the two usually go hand in hand) need apply.

Geoff, if you had to choose between an 8K copy of an IMAX Nolan film, H.266 compressed, 12-bit and 4:2:0, or a 4K theatrical DCP, which one would you choose?